This report was from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) Annual Meeting in October, 2009. The report is broken down to cover state incentives & policy trends, solar installation trends, net metering & interconnection updates & trends, and workforce development and training. For current policies that are mentioned to withstand solar growth, they mention the Energy Improvement and Reinvestment Act (part of the federal “bailout bill” in 2008) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (part of the “stimulus bill” in 2009).

This report was written by the Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), in association with the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2004. This document graphs different solutions for several conditions by implementing solar thermal chillers.

This presentation was compiled by the utility solar water heating initiative US H2O. It features 4 different reports on innovations which are helping advance the development of the solar thermal market. The first report presents on the benefits of upstream financing for solar thermal industry players. The second report provides information on how third party financing is brining solar thermal installations to new settings. The third report discusses marketing and branding issues facing solar thermal businesses, and provides various solutions to these problems.

This white paper was written by William Guiney of Johnson Controls. It looks at the opportunities and potential for long-run development and wide spread use of solar thermal, especially for pool heating, space heating, and cooling applications.

Solar thermal professionals who have taken an interest in solar district heating, in solar air conditioning or the Brazilian solar thermal market will be able to participate in dedicated conferences over the next months, namely the 3rd International Solar District Heating Conference in Toulouse, France, on 17-18 June, the 6th International Conference on Solar Air Conditioning in Rome, Italy, from 24-25 September and the 3rd Brazilian Solar Heating Congress in São Paulo, Brazil, between 2-3 September. All three events have already released their conference programme.

The Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Center in Abu Dhabi is aiming at becoming the first building to be awarded a 5-pearl Estidama construction rating certificate. The museum and research centre inaugurated in 2015 is located in a tourist area, which includes a 400-hectar wildlife park and a resort consisting of hotels, themed safari tours and residential areas, right on the outskirts of the second-largest city of the emirate, Al Ain, also known as the Garden City. The building has about to achieve Platinum standard, the highest rating of the US LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification scheme. The owner of the building, state-owned Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort, paid EUR 56 million for the green showcase project, which has been adapted for the hot and dry desert climate (see the attached PDF). Solarthermalworld.org already reported on the first 4-pearl office building in Masdar City, which was certified according to the newly developed Estidama rating system of the Abu Dhabi emirate.